I’d never been so high up, except for the truck ride from Kansas. But I’d still been recovering from the dust sickness then, so I slept most of the trip.
As I walked with Petey, I’d sneak peeks down over the camp. I could see people down there moving about. They were getting ready for the singing and dancing that would go on after the sun went down. They were all Okies like us, running away from the dust and failed crops. If we’d had some hills, the dust storms would’ve never wrecked our land and I wouldn’t’ve been in stupid California looking for stupid rocks.
“The rocks is part of us getting home.”
“How?”
Petey stopped and picked up a rock. “I don’t really know.” He showed me the small rock. It was more like a pebble than a rock. It wasn’t much bigger than my thumb. He plopped it in his jar.
I showed him a rock. Petey shook his head.
“Thanks, but it has to be a little smaller.”
“Petey?” I pitched the rock behind me. “Do you want to go home real bad?”
Petey looked at me, with watery eyes.
“Yeah, it’s all I think about,” Petey said. He kept staring at me. “Don’t you want to go home too?”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought for a few seconds and then nodded. “I can’t really remember much about home before the dust storms. I just remember we were all happy.”
Petey looked back down at his handful of rocks. “I want to go home so bad it hurts. It hurts my ma too.”
“The rocks will get you home?” I asked.
Petey threw one pebble on the ground and stuffed the rest into his Mason jar. “Yeah, they will.”
“Petey?” I asked. “Will they get me home too?”
“If I tell you they won’t will you still help me?”
I thought about that some.
Petey turned away from me. “Leave if you want.”
I looked down on the ground and there was a bright rock staring back at me. I picked it up. It was the color of chalk. I walked over to Petey and showed him. It must have been the right size because Petey looked at me for a second, like he was going to say something, but then he didn’t. Instead, he held out his jar. I let the rock slowly roll off my fingers and plink into the jar. Petey and I looked at each other for a second and then we went back to our searching.
I have to say it was hard finding rocks that size. There really weren’t many the right size. Petey said no to lots that I offered him.
It was real hot and I was getting thirsty. My eyes were stinging from the brightness. I didn’t want to stop until Petey did.
“Johnnie?” Petey said. We were both squatting down over a pile of rocks we’d stumbled across.
“Huh?”
“We friends?” he asked. His voice was hopeful.
I didn’t look up. “Sure we are. I’m looking for your rocks, right?”
I didn’t tell him I was out there killing time because I didn’t want to be home cleaning. I did like him, so it wasn’t an all-out lie. I think having a friend was another one of those memories I’d tucked so far back into my head that I was near forgetting it.
“Why do you need the rocks?” I asked. I stopped digging. I had to squint to see him in the fierce sun.
Petey wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. “They have to be exactly the right size,” he said. He held a handful of them out to me. “We need them for our engine.”
“Like a truck engine?”
“Yeah, except our engine isn’t in a truck and we need rocks instead of gasoline,” he said.
Petey turned and started digging around a bush. He thought I wasn’t looking. He tipped his head toward the jar, like he was listening to the rocks. I don’t think he heard anything because he shook his head and looked mad. I looked at the rocks in my own hand. I jiggled them around. “Why don’t you just use marbles?”
“It has to be rocks. A lot of rocks, more rocks than probably all the marbles in California. I don’t know why.”
“Were those rocks saying something to you?” I asked, not looking at him.
For a while Petey didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him picking up rocks and pitching them over his shoulder. Maybe he didn’t hear me, but I didn’t repeat it. Finally, he said, “They’ll get loaded into the engine and sing. It’s a soft hum. I can’t hear them sing now, but I still kind of wish I could. I’d know I got rocks the right size.”
“Like church singing?” I asked.
“Like a lullaby,” he said quietly. “Think back when you were a kid, before you got stuck here, when you were home. Think of being in bed and hearing that song softly in your ear.”
I thought about it. When I was back in Kansas I remembered when it rained and how the raindrops on the roof made me sleepy. I remembered how everyone in the house slept better knowing the rain was feeding the crops. The rain was my lullaby and I had an idea how the rocks singing made him feel.
* * * *
“Petey?” I asked. “Why do you save the rocks in Mason jars?”
Petey and me were out scavenging for more rocks. It started to be a daily job we did after the men left for work. My ma and his ma would get together and start talking and jabbering. They’d shoo us away and we’d go out and fill our pockets with rocks. When Petey finished his juice, we’d put the rocks in the juice jars.
“Pa likes to see ’em. Sometimes he can spot a rock that isn’t the right size smack dab in the middle of a jar. Back home he was trained to know which rocks were the right size.”
I looked up to the sky; it was another real hot day. Petey was wearing the same long-sleeved shirt he always wore. I wasn’t wearing a shirt. The days just ran into each other. Beautiful cloudless California days that seemed to get hotter and hotter. I was glad we weren’t in Kansas eating dust.
Before we left, Petey’s ma handed me Petey’s juice jar and made me promise that I’d make Petey drink his juice while we were out hunting for rocks. I got thirsty after a spell and I took a sip of the juice. I almost spit it out. It wasn’t apple juice at all. It was something else, like Pa’s beer or something stronger. I didn’t say anything to Petey, I just carried the Mason jar around.
When Petey’s pockets were full and there wasn’t any place else to put rocks, he took the jar from me and dumped it out before I could say anything. The juice spilled out onto a big rock and the hot sun dried up the puddle.
“Don’t tell Ma,” he said quickly. We were out further than we were allowed and I broke a promise to his ma. I shook my head. With soft clinks, Petey emptied his pockets into the juice jar. I shoved my hands into my own pockets; they weren’t full yet. I wasn’t as good as Petey was at finding the rocks, but I wanted to show him that I was working so I emptied what few I did have into his jar.
“You just keep helping me. Is it because you believe me? About the engine and the rocks?” Petey asked out of nowhere.
I didn’t answer him for a while. I didn’t quite understand it all but I knew that it was something pretty important or Petey wouldn’t be wasting his time. Finally, I stopped my digging and took another handful over to him. I let them run out of my hand and into his almost full jar. I wiped my hand off on my overalls and held it out. “We’re friends. If one of us can go home that’s better than both of us being stuck here.”
He took my hand and shook it and smiled real big. That was the first time I ever saw him without that spooked look on his face. He was awful red from the sun.
“Petey, you must be really hot in all those clothes. Maybe we should get back.”
“Yeah, we probably should.” Petey wiped his brow with his long sleeve. We had a Mason jar full of rocks. They looked like gray and brown marbles.
Petey and I started back. I led the way. My feet were sore and cut. I was looking forward to a nice swim in the cold lake.
We weren’t too far from camp when I heard the clatter of a Mason jar falling. When I looked behind me, Petey was lying on the ground.